Alignment as Jurisprudence

Abstract

Jurisprudence, the study of how judges should properly decide cases, and alignment, the science of getting AI models to conform to human values, have the same fundamental structure. These seemingly distant fields share an objective, to predict and shape how decisions by powerful actors, in one field judges and in the other increasingly powerful artificial intelligences, will be made in the unknown future. And they use the same tools of specification, rules and cases, to try to accomplish that goal. Thus, rather than thinking of AI models only as aids to judges or focusing on how AI affects specific doctrinal areas like copyright or free speech, as the bulk of post-ChatGPT legal scholarship has done, it is more fruitful to think of models as actually like judges who are taking on an increasing variety of essential adjudicatory and decisionmaking roles in society. The great debates of jurisprudence, about what the law is and what it should be, can provide insight into alignment, and lessons from what works and what does not in alignment can help make progress in jurisprudence.

This essay puts the two fields directly into conversation, illuminating the fundamental similarities between law and AI and pointing to ways in which each field can improve the other. Drawing on leading accounts of jurisprudence, particularly Dworkin’s principle-oriented interpretivism and Sunstein’s positivist account of law as analogical reasoning, and on cutting-edge alignment approaches, namely Constitutional AI and case-based reasoning, it illustrates the value of a more sophisticated legally-inspired approach to the interplay of rules and cases in finetuning alignment and points to ways that AI can provide a better understanding of how judges make decisions. As AI continues to increase in capacity, and as human judges seem to feel increasingly unconstrained in their exercise of power, the conversation between these two fields will become increasingly essential and may point to a better version of both.

Keywords: Jurisprudence, legal theory, AI, alignment, law, computer science